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- 

A LETTER 


1 

FROM 


QERRIT SMITH 


TO 


Albert Barnes 


■ 

1868. 


• 


FOR SALE BY 


REV. J. W. WEST, PE3TERBORO. N". Y. 


Price, 15 tents Single Copies; $1.95 per Dozen. x<> Charge for Postage. 



A LETTER 



FROM 



GEEEIT SMITH 



TO 



Albert Barnes. 



1868. 



FOR SALE BY 

REV. J. W. WEST, PETERBORO, N. Y. 



Price, IS Cents Single Copies; $1.25 per Dozen. No Charge for Posttige. 



. 






< 



LETTER. 



Peterboro, December 25, 1867. 
Rev. Dr. Albert Barnes, Philadelphia : 

My Dear Sir : If I remember rightly, I saw the following 
(perhaps in a book) years ago. I now see it in a newspaper 
which ascribes it to your pen. 

" I confess, for one, that I feel them, and feel them more 
sensibly and powerfully the more I look at them, and the 
longer I live. I do not understand these facts, and I make no 
advances toward understanding them. I do not know that I 
have a ray of light on this subject which I had not when the 
subject first flashed across my soul. I have read, to some 
extent, what wise and good men have written. I have looked 
at their theories and explanations. I have endeavored to weigh 
their arguments, for my whole soul pants for light and relief 
on these questions. But I get neither, and, in the distress and 
anguish of my own spirit, I confess that I see no light what- 
ever. I see not one way to disclose to me why sin came into 
the world, why the earth is strewn with the dying and the 
dead, and why men must suffer to all eternity. I have never 
seen a particle of light thrown on these subjects that has given 
a moment's ease to my tortured mind, nor have I an explana- 
tion to offer, or a thought to suggest, which would be of relief 
to you. I trust other men, as they profess to do, understand 
this better than I do, and that they have not the anguish of 
spirit which I have. But I confess, when I look on a world 
of sinners and sufferers; upon death-beds and graveyards; 
upon the world of woe, filled with hosts to suffer forever; 
when I see my friends, my parents, my family, my people, my 



fellow- citizens — when I look upon a whole race all involved in 
this sin and danger ; and when I see the great mass of them 
wholly unconcerned, and when I feel that God only can save 
them, and yet He does not do it, I am struck dumb. It is all 
dark, dark to my soul, and I can not disguise it." 

You are a gifted and a good man, a learned and a just one ; 
and yet you are a very unhappy one. "Anguish of spirit " is 
yours. "Whence comes this? Confessedly from the violence 
which your theological creed does to your reason, and from 
your not daring to let your reason condemn your creed. Your 
reason sees not reason, but unreason, in that story of the for- 
bidden fruit, which lies at the \erj basis of your theology. 
Nevertheless, you accept the story and its representation of a 
purely arbitrary and an utterly inexplicable dealing of God 
with man. It must be confessed that your creed corresponds 
with the story — the theological structure with its foundation. 
It must be confessed, too, that the more arbitrary and inexpli- 
cable a Theology of authority, the more suitable — especially so, 
because the more submissive, in that case, the superstitious 
disciples. Indeed, it has been held, that one of the strongest 
arguments for the truth of the Christian theology, and why it 
should be believed, is, that it is not understandable. 

Instead of doubting the truth or wisdom of any part of your 
creed, you modestly suppose that, though you can not, others 
can, satisfactorily explain even the most revolting parts of 
it. So entire is your faith in your creed, and so meek is 
your spirit, that all the fault in the case you take to yourself, 
and never suspect that any (however small) share of it, is 
chargeable upon the creed. The creed — although it makes 
God the author of sin ; the builder of an eternal hell ; the 
one able to save men, and yet not saving them ; in short, a 
monster of malignity — you, nevertheless, cling to. Why clo 
you? It, surely, is not that you see any thing natural or rea- 
sonable in these horrible features of it, for there is nothing in 
all the realm of nature or reason to commend them to you ; 
nothing in all the laws of evidence to justify you in regarding 
them as other than fancies and fictions. You know, indeed, 
that none of the Theologies, the Mohammedan, Christian, nor 
any other, can abide these laws. And, though you ought to 
know that a Theology should, above all other things, be tested 



by them, you, nevertheless, accept yours upon mere authority 
— the mere authority too, of the ignorant, superstitious, be- 
nighted past. When I say that your Theology can not abide 
the laws of evidence, I do not fail to take into the account that 
the greater the intrinsic improbability of a statement (and how 
utterly improbable are some of the statements and stories in 
your Theology ! ) the more the evidence requisite to sustain the 
statement. But little evidence is necessary to prove that a man 
has died. That his breathless body went straightway into the 
sky could hardly be believed on any amount of evidence. 

And why, too, will you cling to your creed when, notwith- 
standing the excellence of your head and heart, it makes you so 
very unhappy? The one answer to these questions is, that you 
have allowed authority to force the creed upon you. How 
abhorrent is a religion of authority, as illustrated by your un- 
happiness ! Would that every religion of authority — that every 
such system of superstition and tyranny — were swept from the 
earth! Relieved of a creed which is so utterly defiant of nature 
and reason, you, with such a head and such a heart as are yours, 
could not fail to have large and happy views of the divine char- 
acter and government. Do you turn upon me with the inquiry 
whether I, who am relieved of it, am favored with such views ? 
I answer that I have neither your head nor your heart 

God is not the author of sin. You do not say directly that 
He is ; and yet you seem to ascribe to sin a divine as well as 
mysterious origin. It is true that man is so made that he can 
sin ; but, instead of complaining of this, we should be thankful 
for it. Instead of lamenting it, we should rejoice in it. How 
low a being would man be, were he of necessity sinless ! 
How far inferior to what he now is, were he so constituted 
that he could not sin! He would be a mere machine,, and 
his going right would no more argue wisdom and goodness in 
him than does the right-going of a clock argue wisdom and 
goodness in it. The brute, shut up to the direction of its 
instincts, can not err — can not wander from its nature. But 
Infinite Wisdom, instead of predetermining the steps of man, 
has left him to judge for himself. Great, indeed, is the hazard 
of his judging wrongly; but great, also, is the honor of being 
placed so high in the scale of creation as to be allowed to judge 
for one's self. 



Blessed be God that He has made us capable of sinning: or, 
in other words, capable of transgressing the laws which He has 
written upon our being ! It is not His fault if we transgress 
them ; for He has written them so " plain, that he may run that 
readeth" the most essential of them ; and honest and persistent 
study will compass the remainder. It is not His fault if we 
transgress them ; for He has furnished us with abundant mo- 
tives to keep them, and abundant dissuasives from breaking 
them. "Sin is the transgression of the law." This Bible 
definition of sin is the true one; and, therefore, it is not the 
Maker, but the breaker of the law who is the sinner, who is 
the author of sin, and who brings it into the world. By the 
way, this theological doctrine, that sin is a thing or entity, as is 
light or heat, and that God brought it, as well as them, into the 
world, is a great absurdity and a great blasphemy. Sin is 
simply a failure to obey law ; and a failure for which man, and 
man alone, is responsible. I acknowledged the goodness of 
God in making us capable of sinning. I might have added, in 
making us capable of sinning so greatly. For to say that we 
can sin so greatly is, in effect, to say that we have great powers 
and advantages for learning and obeying law ; it being only in 
the abuse of such powers and advantages that great sinning is 
possible. His nature, through the violation of whose laws man 
has become a great sinner, is the very same sublime nature 
through the keeping of whose laws he would have been a 
saint. 

We ought not to be amazed at sin — either at frequent sin or 
even at great sin. That the wisest men should fall into sin is 
only because the wisest men may be ignorant of some of the 
laws of their being, physical or moral ; and that the best men 
should fall into it is but that the virtue of the best men is not, 
as yet, proof against all temptations to violate the laws of their 
being. What wonder, then, that they who are neither wise nor 
virtuous should fall into it! Their exaggeration of the guilt or 
criminality of sin is not the least of the wrongs chargeable upon 
the Theologies. It not only tends to inspire the fear that we are 
abhorred instead of loved by God, but it, also, tends to make us 
less amiable and sacred in each other's eyes, and to make us 
coarse and cruel in our treatment of each other. The difference 
between our seeing each other to be small sinners or enormous 



sinners can not fail of contributing to produce a corresponding 
difference in our conduct toward each other. That " God is 
angry with the wicked every day" was the fancy, not of those 
who knew the Loving Father of us all, but of those who pic- 
tured, in his stead, a revengeful and bloody Pagan deity ! The 
stars, which shine sweetly upon all ; the green earth, which, 
with its fruits and flowers, was made for all — these, and the 
impartial sun and rain, unitedly testify that God is Love, and 
that He never hates any one. Nothing can be more absurd 
than this ceaseless preaching that the least sin is, because com- 
mitted against an infinitely great and good God, infinitely 
wicked, and, therefore, deserving of infinite punishment. The 
tendency of this preaching, as already intimated, is to make us 
look upon each other as monsters of wickedness ; whereas we 
should, by considering the ignorance and temptations of men, 
regard their sins with all reasonable charitableness. The Just 
One, who knows our ignorance, and who saw fit, in appoint- 
ing the first stage of our discipline, to put us into this world 
of temptations, pities us for our sufferings in this life; and, 
although these sufferings are mainly sin-induced, He, neverthe- 
less, can have no heart to add to them punishment in the life to 
come. He has no curses for us. On the contrary, He does all 
that He can (compatibly with our freedom and power to thwart 
and counteract Him) to save us from cursing ourselves and 
cursing one another. Far am I from holding that there is no 
suffering in the next life. If there is sin there, (and I believe 
there is,) suffering is also there — for suffering necessarily attends 
sinning. All I mean to say, at this point, is, that God does not 
add punishment to this suffering ; and that the only punish- 
ment in the case is that which is in this necessarily attendant 
suffering. 

Doubtless^ the day is coming when there will be comparative- 
ly little sin on the earth. Science, more than all other agencies, 
hastens the coming of this day. For we may reasonably hope 
that, when science shall have more fully revealed to men the 
laws of their being, obedience to these laws will be in greater 
proportion to the knowledge of them than it now is. Indeed, we 
may reasonably hope that men will not sin forever — that, if not 
in this life, nevertheless in the next, their increasing knowledge 
will conquer their ignorance, and their increasing virtue will 



8 

conquer their temptations. So far from falling in with the irra- 
tional and God-dishonoring doctrine, that the sinner will have 
no opportunities in the next life for reformation and improve- 
ment, we should allow reason and nature to inspire the ex- 
pectation, that such opportunities will be far greater there than 
here. 

That our views and treatment of one another are greatly 
modified by our conceptions of the Deity should not be doubted. 
Every people resembles its God. The justification of the Jew 
for hating the Gentiles was that his God hated them. The ex- 
cessive punishments inflicted by the Jews did but harmonize 
with their conceptions of God. His cruelty was the warrant 
for theirs. We ought not to wonder that they put the man to 
death who "gathered sticks upon the Sabbath-day;" or that 
they punished with death disobedience to parents. These enor- 
mities grew largely out of their belief in that vindictive, bloody, 
monstrous God, who, unhappily, became the God of the Christian 
nations also. But it may be asked why, if these nations adopted 
the God of the Jews, do they not inflict as unreasonable and 
merciless punishments as the Jews did. The answer is — that 
their God has been changing, for a very long time. A civiliza- 
tion, increasingly science- shaped by the progress of science, has, 
for centuries, been encroaching upon the superstition, intole- 
rance, and cruelty of the Christian Church, and softening the 
repulsive features of her God. Such pictures of the Deity, as 
her pulpits were wont to draw, no longer ago than the begin- 
ning of the present century, they would hardly be allowed to 
draw now. There lies before me a sermon preached, less than 
forty years ago, by Kev. Di; Alvan Hyde, of Massachusetts, to 
justify the doctrine of the eternal damnation of infants. A 
Massachusetts audience would not tolerate such a sermon now. 
The Church will, ere long, have to let these grotesque and ab- 
horrent Theologies go down-stream, if science and' common 
sense but continue their present successful war upon them. 

God has made no hell All the hells are made by men. God 
puts no one into them. Men put themselves and one another 
into them. God's part is to keep them out and pull them out, 
so far as they will let Him. All His laws are to this end ; and 
were all men obedient to them, not only would no one be in 
hell, but there would be no hell. I said that not only nature 



9 

and reason, but, also, all the laws of evidence are against your 
horrible creed. What, for instance, is the evidence that there 
is an eternal hell ? It is, chiefly, one word said to have been 
spoken by Jesus. But how far it is from certain, that he spoke 
it, and, especially, that he spoke it, intending it to have the 
meaniug given to it in our translation, and by our ecclesiastical 
standards! Although we have satisfactory evidence that he 
spoke substantially as the New Testament says he did, we have 
no right to believe that his speeches were, word for word, as 
recorded in that book. Again, Jesus did not claim to know all 
the future. There is no proof of the existence of any but man- 
made hells. And, although there are many persons who still 
believe in a God-made hell, (some of them, however, only be- 
cause they have enemies whom they wish to put into it,) it is, 
nevertheless, gratifying to know that the intelligent man is now 
very rare to whom such a hell is an object of delightful con- 
templation. Where, now, could be found a person of suffi- 
ciently satanic spirit to exclaim, as did Tertullian, one of the 
most eminent of the Church Fathers: "How shall I admire, 
how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many 
proud monarchs and fancied gods groaning in the lowest abyss 
of darkness ; so many magistrates, who persecuted the name 
of the Lord, liquefying in fiercer fires than they ever kindled 
against the Christians ; so many sage philosophers, blushing in 
red-hot flames with their deluded scholars !" 

" God only can save them, and yet He does not do it." This is 
another of your great mistakes. God tries to save all men 
from sinning. Bat He has not the ability to save any man 
without the help of that man. Had He intended to retain such 
ability, He would not have "created man in His own image," 
and invested him with free agency, and the power to choose 
his character and destiny. When God made man so great, as 
to " will and to do " for himself, He made him too great to be 
saved by the direct and unaided power of even God himself 
Men must work with God in accomplishing this salvation, or 
it can not be accomplished. Hence, instead of your sorrowing 
over God's not saving men, it would be less unreasonable in you to 
sorrow that He made man so great; so much like Himself; and, 
in some vital respects, so far beyond even the Divine control. 

That "the earth is strewn with the dead" is, also, mysterious 



10 

to you. But it should not be. For several reasons we should 
be glad that men die, when their bodies are worn out with old 
age. Amongst these reasons are — 1st. This life has, then, 
become more of a burden than an enjoyment. 2d. We trust 
that, at its termination, a higher life awaits us. 3d. Our death 
makes room for others to live — for an endless succession ol 
generations to have experience of earthly existence. In the 
distant future, when men shall live wisely here, earth-life will 
be far more precious than it now is. Had the life of man ex- 
tended to thousands of years, the inhabitants of the earth would 
have been but a handful compared with the aggregate souls 
of those unending generations. And in that case, there would 
have been not only comparatively few to know this life, but, 
consequently, comparatively few to be translated from it to the 
nobler life. 

But, perhaps, your lamentation is over premature deaths only. 
They, certainly, should not be charged upon God. They come 
not from His hand. When men shall have learned, as they yet 
will learn, the laws of life and health ; and shall, as they yet 
will, faithfully keep them, there will not only be few or none 
of these premature deaths, but the ordinary length of this ex- 
istence will, probably, be at least double its present three-score 
and ten years. We should be very careful not to charge upon 
the Great and Good Father the evils, which come from the un- 
necessary ignorance and wilful sins of His children. 

This creed, which makes you so unhappy — would that you 
could throw it away, and thereby encourage thousands to throw 
away their similar creed ! But, I fear, that you still confound 
your Theology with your Eeligion — or, that you, at least, regard 
this greatest of all hinderances to your Eeligion as a help to it. 
I fear that your eyes have never yet been opened to see that the 
heaviest of all Earth's curses is the confounding of Eeligion, 
here with one, and there with another, of the Theologies. I 
fear that you still suffer yourself to call the Bible all true — 
though, in doing so, you, none the less because unconscious of 
it, insult God and make yourself the enemy of man It is, in- 
deed, the best of books — a repository of the sublimest inspira- 
tions, principles, and precepts. Nevertheless, it abounds in 
foolish, false, and exceedingly pernicious things. Its silly, and 
some of them very revolting, stories about the Eed Sea, the 



11 

San and Moon, the Whale and Jonah, Lot's wife turning into 
salt, the control of the skies by Elijah's prayers, God's sending 
" lying spirits " into His children, etc., etc., have ever continued 
to feed to fatness the superstition of Christendom. The Bible's 
wicked curse upon Caanan has been the prevailing plea with so- 
called Christians for carrying fire and sword into Africa, and 
robbing her of tens of millions of her children. Its causeless 
and cruel wars, charged on God Himself, justify every war and 
every murder. Its one short line : " Thou shalt not suffer a witch 
to live," has cost the hanging and burning of many thousands 
of innocent women and not a few innocent men for the fanciful 
crime of witchcraft. Its making woman guilty of the first sin, 
and its charging chiefly upon that sin her pains in child-bearing, 
have gone far to justify man in stamping her with inferiority 
and in playing the tyrant over her. Its representing God to be 
the hater of men, and of some even before they were born, must 
go far toward making it impossible for those who believe in 
such a God, to have just minds and loving hearts. In its own 
words, " And what shall I say more? — for the time would fail 
me to tell of" all the foolish and abominable things in this book, 
which ecclesiastical authority commands us to gulp down entire, 
or, "without picking and culling," as one of my good old minis- 
ters required. I said the Bible was the best of books. It is 
such, when it is allowed to be read in freedom and with dis- 
crimination. But it is, perhaps, not too much to say that it is 
the worst of books, when read under authority, and with no 
liberty to call any of its words in question. 

This belief that every word of the Bible is true — how much 
evil it has wrought! From this delusive belief has come the 
running to it to learn when the world will end. But for this 
superstitious use of the Bible, who, in Christendom, would have 
thought of the world's ever ending! " Millerism," however, 
and its frequent kindred predecessors in the past centuries, 
much as they have clone, by their reliance on alleged Bible pre- 
dictions, to agitate, unsettle, and afflict mankind, are but a faint 
illustration of the evil that has come from believing every word 
in the Bible to be true. 

The longer I live, the more am I persuaded that wealth is 
what the world most needs for its redemption from ignorance, 
wickedness, and unhappiness. Enough of it is created by the 



12 

toiling poor, and, in point of fact, they are nearly all who do 
create it. Alas, that the misuse of much of it should be such, as 
to make the toiling poor poorer ! War, intemperance, excessive 
luxury, and giddy, reckless fashion are great wasters of wealth ; 
but no one of them wastes more than do the Theologies, direct- 
ly and indirectly. For instance, if the Christian Theology had 
not so successfully passed itself off for the Christian Eeligion, 
these evils, which I have just now enumerated, would, so far 
as Christendom is concerned, have been far less extensive, and 
their waste of wealth correspondingly less. Then, look at the 
hundreds of millions, which it costs Christendom annually to 
build and support the churches and other establishments, which 
this Theology calls for ! For, remember, that this expenditure 
is not to meet the demands of the simple Christ-Religion, but 
the demands of the various modifications and various sectarian 
shades of this nrystic and miracle-stuffed Theology. It is the 
rivalry of the Theological sects, which calls for this vast expen- 
diture. Plain halls would suffice for the assemblies of those, 
who seek to grow in this simple religion ; and plain, loving- 
hearted men and women would be acceptable preachers in them, 
though the highest order of talent and culture should also be 
heard in them. Simple, as sweet, is the religion taught by the 
blessed Jesus — the one religion of nature and reason — the reli- 
gion of doing as we would be done by — the babe-religion, (for 
He declares that even " babes " can understand it,) the religion, 
in short, which, according to Him, none need aid to understand, 
for He said to the people, to the promiscuous multitudes : " Yea, 
and why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?" Had 
Jesus believed that a Theology — a metaphysical system — was 
necessary to the elucidation of his religion, he would, at least, 
have said so ; and, probably, would have furnished it. His 
simple religion, summed up in the obvious duty of loving our 
brother, and his, and our, common Father, it can hardly be said 
that He thought it necessary to explain. It is true that He 
often illustrated it, but it was by the simplest objects in nature, 
and in other ways scarcely less simple. Oh ! how sad it is, that 
you and other wise and learned and good men should still per- 
sist in leading the people to look amongst metaphysics and 
mysteries for a religion so intelligible, as to be understood, the 
moment it is seen ; and to look for it, too, amidst historical and 



13 

traditional uncertainties, when it is to be found, and found only, 
in the certainties of their consciousness ! History and tradition 
suffice to inform us in matters where mistakes are not vital. 
But better is it to build our house upon the sand than to build 
our religion upon a foundation so uncertain as history and tra- 
dition. Nevertheless, upon this utterly untrustworthy founda- 
tion do nearly all men, in all lands, build their religion. 

In this connection let me say how infinitely absurd is the 
doctrine, that a religion so simple and so obviously true as is 
the Christ-Keligion, needs to be proved by miracles. The Theo- 
logies are not worth proving ; and, therefore, no miracles are 
called for in their case. 

After what I have said, it is hardly necessary to add, that 
men do not need to go to church to learn the Theologies, since 
the Theologies are far worse than merely worthless. Nor hardly 
necessary is it to add, that they need not go there to learn the 
Christ-Keligion. Almost as superfluous is it to go there to learn 
this exceedingly simple Eeligion of nature, as it would be to go 
to school to learn how to breathe and swallow. The Christian 
preacher need spend very little time in teaching his hearers this 
Religion. They, already, know it. His work is to persuade 
them to love and practise it. 

I spoke of the plain halls in which will be the future preach- 
ing of the plain Gospel. And how suitable, too, will they be 
for lecturers on natural science — for the geologist and astrono- 
mer I These lecturers will be immeasurably useful in clearing 
away the rubbish which ignorance has put in the way of reli- 
gion. They will open books, and read from books, which can 
not deceive, and which go farther than all things else to save 
religion from sinking into superstition, sectarianism, and bigotry. 

Very painful to me, and doubtless to you also, is the sight of 
so much of God's good earth, and so much of human industry, 
put to the production of tobacco and the materials for intoxicat- 
ing drinks. But more painful it is to me, and I would it were 
also to you, to see wise and learned and good men at work to 
uphold these cracking and tottering structures of ignorance and 
superstition, which they should be at work, day and night, to 
demolish. It is even more desirable to see good heads and good 
hearts than good soils put to good uses. 

The churches wonder at the rapid increase of what they 



14 

call " infidelity," but wbat is chiefly the casting off of the 
Theologies. They should not wonder at it. It is entirely 
unreasonable to expect that our science-enlightened age shall 
hold to the Theologies, constructed in an age of darkness — an 
age, when it was believed that the earth was a plane of only a 
few hundred miles in circumference, and, yet, of such para- 
mount importance, that the sun, moon, and stars were made but 
to serve it — and an age, too, when it was believed that God's 
dealings with His children, instead of being directed by 
unvarying laws, were but the irregular and fitful impulses, 
now of His love and now of His hatred, now of His revenge 
and now of His repentance. How is it possible that Europe 
and America, having learned that the earth is but a speck in an 
illimitable universe, and that the unvarying laws, which govern 
both, leave no room for a passionate and changeful God, and 
no room for the working of miracles — how is it possible, I say, 
that they can much longer continue to have patience with these 
puerile Theologies ? Europe and America will continue to go 
back to Asia for their Jesus Christ, since there has been but 
one Jesus Christ. But, they will cease to go back to her ignor- 
ance and superstition for materials out of which to construct 
their Theologies. 

On the whole, my dear sir, I am glad, not only that you con- 
fess the /extreme unhappiness, which this absurd creed of 
the " orthodox " gives you, but, (and I say it with all tender- 
ness of heart toward your sufferings,) I am glad you are made 
so unhappy by this God- dishonoring and man-shriveling creed. 
That you are made so unhappy by it, will induce very many 
to forsake it, and will hold back still more from embracing it. 
Great as are your sufferings from your creed, even you will not 
regret them, if you shall come to see how many of your fellow- 
men have been enlightened and warned by them. 

With warm desires that these fancies, which so afflict you, 
may soon leave you, and that these fictions, which you have so 
unhappily allowed to usurp the place of truths, may soon be 
seen by you to be but fictions, 

I remain, with great regard, your friend, 

Gereit Smith. 



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